Local Ukrainian leader will help monitor election in homeland

A team of U.S. election monitors, including a leader of the Detroit area Ukrainian-American community, is preparing to depart for violence-plagued Ukraine in advance of the March 25 presidential election.

Election monitor Borys Potapenko, former longtime director of the Ukrainian Cultural Center in Warren, believes a clean election that earns international legitimacy can be accomplished in his homeland despite the fighting between government forces and pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.

“The situation in eastern Ukraine, I think, has deteriorated but … once you walk a few city blocks away from the city hall or other government buildings occupied by these separatists, nothing’s going on. Life is very normal,” said Potapenko, a Troy resident.

A group of 200 American volunteers will take part in the election monitoring process. Potapenko will serve as a translator and facilitator in Kharkiw, a large city on the Russian border with eastern Ukraine.

Canada, which has a large Ukrainian population, is sending nearly 350 observers and allocating $11 million for their mission.

Another group of up to 150 observers and 12 parliamentarians will join an election monitoring mission from the Organization for Security Co-operation in Europe. The British have contributed an additional $840,000 for election monitoring.

While the international community gears up for the vote, Secretary of State John Kerry said on Thursday if Moscow or its proxies disrupt it, the U.S. and European Union will move to impose heavier economic sanctions.

“I’m not going to get into announcing today what the sanctions are,” Kerry said following a meeting in London with his counterparts from Britain, France, Germany and Italy. “We have completed our work. We know what they are. ... If they have to go into effect, they will have an impact.”

Oakland University political science professor Cristian Cantir predicted the elections will likely go off without a hitch throughout much of Ukraine but the government in Kiev has “lost control” of two areas in the east where armed rebels held questionable referendum votes over the weekend and have declared the region’s independence.

Beyond the prospect of bombs or bullets on election day, Cantir said the logistics will prevent voting in those restive eastern areas.

“There’s only (nine) days to go and the Kiev authorities are not prepared to organize an election in those places because there are still armed conflicts going on,” said Cantir, who originally hailed from Moldova, a tiny country on Ukraine’s western border.

On Tuesday, six Ukrainian military troops were killed and eight wounded after being ambushed by separatists in Kramatorsk.

A Wednesday standoff between government troops and 15 men armed with automatic weapons outside a military base in Donetsk ended without bloodshed.

But the unrest continued on Thursday as Ukraine’s acting president, Oleksandr Turchynov, claimed the Ukrainian army destroyed an insurgent base in Slovyansk and another one in nearby Kramatorsk, about 95 miles west of the Russian border.

Potapenko, vice president of the International Council in Support of Ukraine, said he believes the upcoming election will succeed in 23 of Ukraine’s 25 provinces, as many Ukrainians label the pro-Russian forces in the east –perhaps numbering as little as 1,000 to 2,000 – as largely thugs and criminals.

“Those who sow the violence get the attention and they give the illusion that they’re speaking on behalf of someone,” said Potapenko, an adviser to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper on Ukrainian matters.

Cantir said Russian President Vladimir Putin, through his control of Russian newspapers and TV stations, has outflanked Ukrainian authorities by engaging in effective Soviet-style propaganda that claims Ukraine has become dominated by extremist, far-right politics.

“The Russians are winning the media war,” the professor said. “Some people … honestly believe that there are some sort of neo-Nazi or fascist groups dominating the government in Kiev.”

Secretary Kerry has hailed European-backed peace talks on ending Ukraine’s crisis, which drew a wide cross-section of participants. But the discussions began with little promise Wednesday when pro-Russian insurgents — who weren’t invited to the session — demanded that the Kiev government recognize their sovereignty.

The “road map” toward political compromise put forth by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe calls for national dialogue as a first step toward resolving the escalating tensions. But Ukrainian government leaders have called the separatists terrorists who have no place at the bargaining table.

In a jab at Russia, Kerry claimed that the level of decentralization and autonomy that Ukraine’s acting Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk has articulated “far exceeds any level of autonomy or decentralization that exists anywhere in Russia.”

Meanwhile, Russia on Thursday ratcheted up pressure on Ukraine, saying that it only will deliver gas to its financially struggling neighbor next month if it pays in advance.

Putin said in a letter to European leaders that Moscow would switch to pre-paid deliveries if Ukraine, which serves as a major conduit for Russian gas supplies to Europe, failed to start settling its mounting, $3.5 billion gas debt.